Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

ENGINEERING THE END OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE

Philippe Ariès Pages RessuscitéesEdited by Guillaume Gros240pp. Cerf Éditions. €24. Given that Philippe Ariès wrote about man’s relation with his own mortality, it is piquant that the historian has be

C. Thi Nguyen The Score How to stop playing someone else’s game 368pp. Allen Lane. £25. Games and metrics are cousins of a sort. They both give us targets to pursue, often in the form of numerical sco

The natural disaster that resulted in the prominent ancient Greek city of Helike being lost for centuries

The history of Mexico is epic. There are the Maya and the Aztecs; the meeting of two continents, with Moctezuma and Cortés; a cry for independence led by a priest-turned-general; the loss of more than